"AI is a Ponzi scheme designed to harvest large investments....a way to destroy IP for the individual and vest it to the

[highplainsdem]

Broligarchs"

From Robert Young Pelton - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Young_Pelton - who unfortunately is not on Bluesky.

Broken X link - remove the spaces to use it:

https: // x. com/RYP__/status/1977066695799009397

Robert Young Pelton
@RYP__
AI is a Ponzi scheme designed to harvest large investments. Much like crypto it attracts stupid money with an illogical endstate. AI is just a way to destroy IP for the individual and vest it to the Broligarchs.

[Diraven]

1. The crash is going to be huge

I read an article the other day that just maintaining all the current and planned AI data centers will cost almost half a trillion dollars a year. And how much profits do all the AI companies make from it? About $20 billion per year. That's not even close to sustainable. They all seem to be hoping for a completely unforseen breakthrough that will lead to massively greater profits by throwing ever more money at it before the whole industry implodes.

[highplainsdem]

6. Ed Zitron has done a great job showing how unstable the AI industry is.

[SheltieLover]

2. I just wish people wouldn't get sucked into the dark rabbithole of using it!

Last edited Sun Oct 12, 2025, 01:05 PM - Edit history (1)

[highplainsdem]

3. The people hyping AI flatter users by saying it shows users' creativity, which is bullshit. And the chatbots

are designed to flatter users and tell them how smart, perceptive, etc., they are, to keep them engaged and ideally get them hooked on that AI model.

[SheltieLover]

9. Sickening!

[SheltieLover]

12. Creative people wouldn't touch ai

[moonscape]

14. It's sadly hilarious. I don't use it

much but confess to occasionally. On a lark I asked Chat GPT about a dilemma - it responded with advice, I said but xyz - it told me how perceptive I was, how absolutely correct, and reiterated what I had said as its new position. Then it tried to bait me into further discussion and resulting flattery but I bailed.

[Blue_Adept]

4. Every time I come across someone using it/posting it here, it just expands my blocklist.

[highplainsdem]

5. A lot of people on Bluesky automatically block anyone using it or posting it. AI is very harmful to

discussion boards and other social media.

Including via AI companies stealing content for training data, rarely showing where the content they stole came from, diverting traffic from the sites they stole from, and scraping content so often they drive up those websites' costs. As EarlG has mentioned happening here at DU, with the AI companies' bots.

AI companies are doing tremendous damage to the internet, and much faster than I'd expected. And the AI-befuddled people posting AI slop are helping them do that damage.

[SheltieLover]

11. Absolutely!

[SheltieLover]

10. Yuppers!

[Bernardo de La Paz]

18. Obvious AI satire is not worth blacklisting. For example

I had an idea to ask one to make a picture of tRump's cabinet in the cabinet room but with every face but tRump's replaced by Epstein's face. It would be obviously AI and obviously satire and would make an effective point.

[Blue_Adept]

22. No, it is worth blocking for the aforementioned ethical and environmental issues

If you say that using GenAI is acceptable for satire, that just leaves me wondering if you actually understand the environmental impact of it.

[highplainsdem]

23. GenAI satire isn't okay. Use AI-free photo-editing tools. Think of EarlG's great Pic Of The Moment images.

[Hugin]

7. There's some glowing omissions from that chart.

Amazon and Apple, for instance. Trillions (with a tee) more there.

[highplainsdem]

8. I'm guessing it's from an article that's mostly about OpenAI.

[Hugin]

13. Google and Meta, as well.

Gads! How’d I miss those? :smdh:

They’re all one big incestuous derivative of one another. Much like South Park’s infamous hump ball.

You may be right about the focus of the article accounting for the omission.

[highplainsdem]

15. Fellow criminals who are desperate not to be held accountable for the IP theft powering their AI, or any

of the many harms done by their companies.

[Hugin]

16. I'd be okay with them stealing the yard work or cleaning the grout.

But, that doesn’t seem to be an option.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

19. Amazon and Apple are more self-funding than the rest. Little or no circular financing. . . . . nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

17. Circular financing is a feature of bubbles. . . . . nt

[ProfessorGAC]

20. Beat Me To It

The one item in that chart I still find stunning is Microsoft having a market cap of $3.8 trillion against an asset base of $620 billion.
The company is 50 years old & a dominant player for 40.
Where does the 6x potential come from in a company that mature?

[Hugin]

21. AKA Self licking ice cream cones...

It's a feature of echo chambers.